I would like to nominate Barend Köbben, University of Twente (ITC, Netherlands) as Charter Member of OSGeo. Barend has done excellent contributions to the educational efforts of Open Source GIS not only through his teaching and research in his university but also wider outreach programs. One good example is his short courses and workshops in Open Source GIS & WebMapping, promoting the use of the Open Source geospatial applications and data (recently one at AGILE for example, see list at http://kartoweb.itc.nl/kobben/OSGEOcourses.html ). These kind of workshops have been very successful in outreach and education efforts for OSGeo.

I'd like to nominate Angelos Tzotsos as an OSGeo Charter member, as I believe he exemplifies many of the key qualities we look for in OSGeo Advocates.

For the last few OSGeo-Live releases, Angelos has taken responsibility for the OSGeo-Live build , then tested every application, and then worked with projects to help get them working on OSGeo-Live. He also contributes to a number of OSGeo projects, leads Greek OSGeo translations, and has presented on OSGeo topics at numerous conferences.

As per his OSGeo Advocate profile [1]:

Angelos is a remote sensing expert with background in surveying engineering and software development. He is involved in numerous activities around free and open source software and has great experience in geospatial applications. His research involves object-based image analysis, machine learning, computer vision and remote sensing. He is an active advocate of OSGeo in Greece at related conferences ...

I would like to nominate Anita Graser for charter membership. Many of you will know her work under the name of Underdark which is her user name on gis.stackexchange [1] and her blog "Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings" [2] where she is tireless in promoting QGIS and other open source GIS tools. Anita is also a contributor to the QGIS code base [3] and QGIS Community Assistant (Press Material Team Lead)[4].

I would like to nominee to Victor Olaya, an GIS enthusiast and a multifaceted character. He's the creator and the main developer of the SEXTANTE library[1], an open-source library for spatial data analysis currently used by several applications such as gvSIG, QGIs, uDIG, ... He has been involved in open-source software development and GIS since the beginning of his career, focusing on spatial data analysis and geomorphometry. His contribution to the open source for geospatial is very remarkable and he is also the author of the first free book based on Geographic Information Systems[2].

I want to nominate Pedro-Juan Ferrer[1] for the Charter Member election.

Pedro-Juan has been really active at OSGeo and specially OSGeo Spanish
Language Local Chapter (OSGeo-es) since the beginning of its
activities. He is member of the Board of Directors of OSGeo-es
(recently re-elected) and the Liason Officer between the LC and the
Foundation, always attentive with any task required from him.

So he is an experienced OSGeo'er with a good knowledge of the
foundation internals and an advanced user with experience on many
FOSS4G tools as his talks about OSGeo and OSGeo Live can demonstrate.
Finally he is also very active at our microchapter here at Valencia[2]
with talks and workshops.

The Charter Membership is needed of active profiles like him, in my
humble opinion he is a truly OSGeo advocate.

Andrea as a key contributor to the GeoServer[1] and GeoTools[2] projects. Actually Andrea may be the key contributor - the GeoServer issue tracker lists Andrea as the project lead. While I feel I should quote some bug closing statistics here, what is more important is his commitment to the community (always ready with a code review) and supportive presence on the GeoServer [1] and GeoTools [2] user lists.

As a public representative Andrea is beloved for his effective stage presence. Most recognisable in the popular FOSS4G "WMS Shootout" series[3], or exploring topics at regional events (most recently making the trip to FOSS4G-NA [4]).

I would like to nominate Jean-Roc Morreale [0]. His work is mainly focuse on
Francophone Local Chapter (as Board member) and QGIS project.

He managed the French QGIS translation [1] process and in this way published the QGIS user manuel in french (book and pdf file). He is a great contributor to QGIS and realized several presentation and training on OSGeo FOSS application.

As a OSGeo-fr board member he brings an user point of view and as a charter member can bring a local chapter point of view which is imho important.

I will let Jean-Roc give more information about his point of view and works on
QGIS and OSGeo-fr LC.

I would like to nominate Dr Serena Coetzee, University of Pretoria (South Africa) as Charter Member of OSGeo. Serena has done excellent contributions to the educational efforts of OSGeo. She not only established and lead the first Open Source Geospatial Laboratory in Africa [0] but is actively helping and sharing expertise with other universities in Africa for building up the educational efforts.

Short biography: Serena Coetzee joined the University of Pretoria in 2006, where she received her PhD on data grids, SDIs and address data in the Department of Computer Science. She is now in the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology where she leads the Centre for Geoinformation Science [1] and established the first Open Geospatial Laboratory in Africa. Her research interests are geospatial web services, geographic information standards, address data, spatial databases and SDIs. Serena actively participates in international geographic information standardization efforts in ISO/TC 211, Geographic Information/Geomatics, where she leads the ISO 19160, Addressing, project and chairs the ISO/TC 211 Programme Maintenance Group (PMG). She also leads SANS 1883, the South African Address standard. Serena started her career as a software engineer on the development teams of desktop GIS products. Subsequently, at AfriGIS, she led GIS projects on spatial data capturing, manipulation and maintenance to geocoding, spatial analysis and Internet mapping.

I have the honor to nominate Michael Smith for OSGeo Charter membership.

Mike is with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Remote Sensing GIS Center,
and has been a longtime supporter of FOSS. Most recently he is working
very hard with Howard Butler to develop an Open Source point cloud
translation library, PDAL [1]. Mike is also very active in the
MapServer [2] community, as one of its most vocal power users, and in
2011 he was named to the MapServer Project Steering Committee [3].

I also had the pleasure of giving a MapServer workshop with Mike at
FOSS4G 2011 in Denver; many attendees said that it was a wonderful
workshop, and I attribute that to Mike's thorough knowledge of MapServer
and its recent changes.

Mike is often one of the first to sign up for Code Sprints, and register
for FOSS4G events, which to me says everything about his passion for
this community. He may not prefer to be giving fancy presentations and
taking the glory, but scratch the surface of many OSGeo communities and
you'll find Mike supporting it in every way he can.

Karel is long-time GIS visionary and supporter for Open Source GIS
development in both - private activities as well as business.

He is also active on the European level, working on various projects,
always looking at Open Source GIS and its improvement. He is also
closely related to INSPIRE "movement", with experiences of practical
life with this directive. Karel is always looking for the ways, how to
bring practical features, required by users, to developed software
packages. He was chair of first FOSS4G-CEE Conference in Prague 2012
(even though he could not participate personally).

Jan is long-time Java developer, being active mostly in the Geotools
community. Jan is currently working at University of West Bohemia and in
Help Service Remote Sensing company - so he has connection to both -
academic and private business worlds.

Thomas has been a long time active supporter of the Open Source GIS movement. He developed mod_geocache which has since been merged with MapServer as MapCache, he is an active developer of MapServer and recently taken on the responsibility for the latest MapServer release in the works.

Thomas has presented in various FOSS4G conferences and is constructive and a great team player. I think Thomas would make an excellent OSGeo Charter Member.

Mauricio is a Board Member of the Spanish Local Chapter since 2011, and
he is very active inside the community, leading and pushing up the
community in Argentina and Latin America, among others. He is organizing
and managing meetings and events in Latin America with the aim to spread
the word within newcomers and privative software users.

I'd like to nominate Peter Löwe [0] for OSGeo Charter Membership.
He is active in Free and Open Source GIS development for more than a
decade, specifically in the field of remote sensing, but also on rule
based systems, crisis management, high performance computation...

He collaborated with FOSSGIS.de (he has been its very first
non-founding member), Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam GFZ, the
South African Metereological Service (where he successfully introduced
his team to GRASS GIS), Geomancers.net and RapidEye AG among others
[1].
He wrote several GRASS modules, available in Addons [2], and obtained
RapidEye data for i.atcorr module [3], been a developer of the GISIX
live-linux DVD [4]. Moreover, he won several research prizes with FOSS
GIS work [see details at 0,1]

I met Peter at FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona, and worked with him during
GRASS Community Sprint 2011 in Prague. He has been so far an effective
ambassador of OSGeo in corporate/academic environment, and he would
benefit from the official recognition of OSGeo community to achieve
further objectives.

I would like to nominate Dr. Massimiliano Cannata as new Charter Member.
Dr. Cannata is heading the Geinformatics Division at University of Applied
Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) [0]. He is a regular at FOSS4G
meetings and has presented several interesting results on hazard mapping,
sensor networks, data security etc. He is a PSC member of the GRASS projject
and the ZOO project [1]. His researches are entirely based on developing and
using FOSS4G solutions. He is also known internationally through his research
collaborations and wide travels. He has strong links in the academic, inter-governmental
and industry circles.

(Jeff McKenna) would like to second this nomination. I first met Max, or Maxi, back
in 2004 at the FOSS4G event in Thailand (actually this was the first
event to use the FOSS4G name); Max has been involved in FOSS4G for a
very long time. I've also had the pleasure to work closely with him as
he stayed several months in Canada in 2005, where he was working on
floodplain mapping with GRASS and MapServer. Most recently he was
involved with releasing GeoShield[1], which tackles that important issue
of security for interoperable services.

Max has welcomed me into his beautiful home of Como, Italy, on several
occasions. I consider him and his colleagues very good friends.

Max's passion and experience make him an excellent representative of OSGeo.

Mr P.K.Sinha, has contributed immensely in making educational content for Geologists
in using Free and Open Source GIS. After extensively using GRASS GIS, he has made several
case studies for raster analysis including modelling for floods. He has several exercises of course
content used in the Geological Survey of India for Raster to Vector conversion and Mineral
prognostication using a combination of OpenJUMP and PostGIS.

I would like to nominate Brian Hamlin (ie. darkblue in IRC) for OSGeo
Charter Membership. Brian has been an active supporter of OSGeo for
several years. His activities include substantial contributions to the
OSGeo Live DVD, and appearing on behalf of OSGeo (ie. manning
a booth) at a variety of events in the California area including Where
some years.

I'm personally keen on him being a charter member because he
has progressive ideas on how to move the organization forward
and quite a bit of energy to pursue them. I'd like to give him more
leverage and confidence to pursue these ideas.

Ragi is an important member of the OSGeo California Chapter. During
the past four years, Ragi has made several presentations about FOSS4G
in various conferences ranging from small local Linux Chapters to
conferences like PgWest, SCALE, OSCON, MySQLConference. He has also
helped setup and work the OSGeo booth for several events. He is the
organizer of the GeoMeetup (San Francisco Meetup with 700+ members)
which has an active OSGeo presence and has been used to raise the
awareness of FOSS4G in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco startup
community. He has created two of GDAL's drivers (ArcObjects and
FileGDB) and contributes GDAL patches as well.

Dimitris is well known to the OSGeo community. I only knew about him from
PSGeo Wiki pages -- for example, he took the responsibility to found the Greek
OSGeo Chapter (end of 2007) -- and contacted him indirectly through the
<greek@lists.osgeo.org> list. I had the chance to meet and discuss with him
during last year's "1st GRASS and GFOSS Users Camp" (in which he was a co-
organizer). I "discovered" that his contributions to the Greek OS community,
and especially to the geospatial OS community, are extensive. Searching the
web should be enough to convince so. Not too long ago, during the 5th
FOSSCOMM (the main Greek OS-communities conference), and the 7th HellasGI
conference, we had more intensive & extensive discussions touching various
subjects. It is great that he shares his rich experiences with the community.
There are many more points in his OSGeo related cv, but I feel that this
message would become too lengthy.

All in all, I consider as very significant having some Greek(s) participating
actively in OSGeo's governance activities. It sure will enrich OSGeo's
diverse and multi-cultural profile as well as it will boost our growing Greek
OSGeo community.

I would like to nominate César Medina [1] from Chile for OSGeo Charter membership.

When I first met César a few years back he was already an OSGeo and FOSS4G enthusiast. Since then he has helped to raise the awareness of the use of Free and Open Source Software in the Geo-Community in Chile and other South American countries. And he additionally contributes to the community on international level.

He will continue to promote initiatives related to Free Software for GIS, with events, meetings and the "geoinquietos Chile" meeting in Chile. He has helped organising the First Conference Chilean gvSIG [2] and initiated a first FOSS4G South America meeting event in 2011 [3].

He would enrich the OSGeo community and would help to boost the uptake of the community in Chile.

I would like to nominate Doug Newcomb, a GIS guru at the US Fish and Wildlife office in Raleigh, NC
as OSGeo charter member.

For many years he has been a fantastic advocate of FOSS4G in
the government agencies offering not only presentations,
organization of sessions and meetings but also technical help
with Mapserver, GDAL/OGR tools and GRASS GIS.
His work with lidar data is famous for breaking records in the amount
of data processed and information extracted with minimal resources.
He has contributed to testing GRASS and other lidar tools
and helped many people to get started with FOSS4G.

I believe that we need more people like Doug and Michael Smith
(also nominated this year by Jeff McKenna)
who can promote FOSS and OSGeo in the government agencies
not only by talking about it but also by using it and demonstrating how well it works
for important agency tasks and cutting edge applications.

I believe Doug would be a great representative of OSGeo and
provide a much needed connection to government agencies
as an active charter member.